System Of The Century: Sega Mega Drive (Aka Sega Genesis)

First release in 1988 in Japan and the U.S market in 1989, the Sega Mega Drive was a cartridge and later on, CD based game console. It was Sega’s third console and it dominated sales in the U.S outselling the SNES by double during the 1991 season (sour Wikipedia).

The success was due to some clever decisions by the new CEO of Sega of America, Tom Kalinske. The decision to release Sonic the Hedgehog as the bundled game with the console saw sales rocket and Sonic called one of the greatest video games you could buy at the time. Also Sega had released the console in Japan earlier then other markets and so had a good library of games available at launch in the U.s, Australia and Europe.